Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology 

Technology is at the heart of Disney’s past, present, and future. Disney Entertainment and ESPN Product & Technology is a global organization of engineers, product developers, designers, technologists, data scientists, and more – all working to build and advance the technological backbone for Disney’s media business globally. The team marries technology with creativity to build world-class products, enhance storytelling, and drive velocity, innovation, and scalability for our businesses. We are Storytellers and Innovators. Creators and Builders. Entertainers and Engineers. We work with every part of The Walt Disney Company’s media portfolio to advance the technological foundation and consumer media touch points serving millions of people around the world.  

 
Here are a few reasons why we think you’d love working here: 

1. Building the future of Disney’s media: Our Technologists are designing and building the products and platforms that will power our media, advertising, and distribution businesses for years to come. 

2. Reach, Scale & Impact: More than ever, Disney’s technology and products serve as a signature doorway for fans' connections with the company’s brands and stories. Disney+. Hulu. ESPN. ABC. ABC News…and many more. These products and brands – and the unmatched stories, storytellers, and events they carry – matter to millions of people globally.  

3. Innovation: We develop and implement groundbreaking products and techniques that shape industry norms, and solve complex and distinctive technical problems. 

Ad Platforms is responsible for Disney’s industry-leading ad technology and products – driving advertising performance, innovation, and value in Disney’s sports, news, and entertainment content, across all media platforms. Job

Summary:

We are seeking a Product Development Engineer II to contribute to the development, support, and optimization of Disney’s Ad Technology data pipelines and big data platforms. This role will focus on hands-on engineering in Databricks, Spark, Flink, and Airflow (MWAA), helping to build reliable data workflows and supporting production operations.

As a mid-level engineer, you will work under the guidance of Senior and Lead Engineers to develop SQL/Python-based pipelines, troubleshoot issues, and participate in monitoring and automation efforts. This role is ideal for someone with strong technical fundamentals who is eager to grow into advanced data engineering responsibilities.

Responsibilities:

Pipeline Development & Support:

• Develop and maintain ETL/ELT pipelines in Databricks, Spark, or Airflow

• Write and optimize SQL and Python jobs for data ingestion and transformation

• Assist in troubleshooting pipeline issues and job failures.

Monitoring & Operations:

• Support monitoring of pipeline health, performance, and resource usage using Datadog, CloudWatch, or similar.

• Respond to alerts and escalate incidents as needed.

Data Quality & Optimization:

• Contribute to data validation, quality checks, and performance tuning of data pipelines.

• Assist in optimizing pipelines for cost efficiency and performance.

Collaboration:

• Work with senior engineers, data engineering, and analytics teams to support project delivery and production operations.

• Participate in cross-team initiatives such as platform upgrades and security reviews.

Documentation & Learning:

• Contribute to documentation, runbooks, and operational checklists.

• Learn and adopt best practices for observability, automation, and incident response.

Basic Qualifications:

• 2+ years of experience in data engineering or related software engineering roles

• Hands-on experience with SQL and scripting languages such as Python.

• Exposure to big data platforms (Databricks, Spark, Flink, or Airflow)

• Familiarity with AWS services (S3, Glue, Athena, EMR) for data workflows

• Understanding of observability concepts (monitoring, logging, alerts) with tools like CloudWatch or Datadog

• Strong problem-solving skills and willingness to learn from senior engineers.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Prior experience supporting data pipelines in production

• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform) or CI/CD systems (GitLab, Jenkins, or GitHub Actions).

• Exposure to data governance, security, or compliance practices.

• Interest in pursuing certifications such as Databricks Data Engineer Associate or AWS Cloud Practitioner.

Required Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field (or equivalent experience